


The Girl

by Hormonal_Trashbag



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Barista Rey, Ben is a giant nerd, F/M, Paterson AU, Poet Ben Solo, featuring my crappy poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 16:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10857762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hormonal_Trashbag/pseuds/Hormonal_Trashbag
Summary: It was four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon and he sat at the small table in the window of Castle Cafe, a family-run coffee place owned by an old acquaintance of his father’s. It was unreasonably warm for May but he still drank his coffee hot, just as he did every day. His life was ruled by routine.He woke up, went for a jog, left for work. In the afternoon, he got coffee, then went back home to eat dinner alone. Rinse and repeat.





	The Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KagamiSorciere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KagamiSorciere/gifts).



> I never thought the day would come that I would write a reylo coffee shop au. Yet, here we are. After hemming and hawing for an hour, I'm posting the most obnoxious self-insert to ever be written. Sorry. Kylo Ren is just so relatable.
> 
> I had two inspirations: a conversation with KagamiSorciere that heavily featured credit card transactions for some reason and a question my mom had after we saw Paterson: "How did they get together?" 
> 
> The "poetry" is mine. I haven't written poetry for two years and it probably shows. I'm wayyyy out of shape. It's embarrassing. I don't care.
> 
> @KagamiSorciere: I hope you like it! Whatever story you end up working on next, I can't wait to read it. :) <3

_Morning’s blush smeared_

_soft pink against_

_a pale, blue horizon--_

It wasn’t poetry, Ben knew, tapping his ball-point pen against his moleskin. Just menial thoughts that had pestered him on his daily run. He hadn’t had the chance to jot them down until now.

It was four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon and he sat at the small table in the window of _Castle Cafe,_ a family-run coffee place owned by an old acquaintance of his father’s. It was unreasonably warm for May but he still drank his coffee hot, just as he did every day. His life was ruled by routine.

He woke up, went for a jog, left for work. In the afternoon, he got coffee, then went back home to eat dinner alone. Rinse and repeat.

“What are you writing?”

Startled, Ben snapped his book shut, his pen trapped between the pages. When he turned his head around, the girl that had taken his order stood behind him, large cinnamon latte (no sweetener) in hand. Just like everything else, the girl was part of his routine.

He wasn’t sure what her name was. The cafe was air-conditioned and even in the summer, she wore sweatshirts over her uniform, obscuring her nametag. Maz, long-time owner, evidently didn’t care. Ben was tempted to call her ASU since half of them were plastered with university emblems. He wondered if she, like so many of their generation, had gone to school to get a worthless degree rather than a practical one.

“Nothing,” he uttered back, averting his gaze as he accepted the latte.

She hummed, already walking back to the counter, “Doesn’t look like ‘nothing’ to me.”

Ben sipped at his latte for an hour and went home. Just as he did the day before. Just as he would tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

As expected, the girl was waiting at the register again. Today, she had an oversized, maroon sweatshirt, HARVARD wrapped around her chest in bold, white lettering. She must have noticed his curious look because she explained with a smile:

“My friend used to joke that if we wore Ivy league clothing, it would raise our GPAs.”

Ben couldn’t help wheezing a short laugh. “Did it work?”

The girl fixed him in place with a stunning, toothy grin. “I work in a coffee shop for minimum wage so, obviously, yes.”

His lips spread into an involuntary smile. She was spunky. It was cute.

He almost asked her for her name, just so he didn’t have to keep calling her _the girl._

She continued before he could talk himself into it. “Let me guess, cinnamon latte? No sweetener?”

He gave a sheepish shrug, asking himself if he should be embarrassed by his own predictability. Instead, he reached into his jeans pocket for his wallet.

“Yes, thank you.”

She swiped his card and handed it back, then left him at the counter to brew an espresso. He watched for a moment before realizing he was staring and promptly marched to his table.

The girl was young and sweet and nothing like him. Ben wasn’t sure that was a problem. Of course, it scarcely mattered. He was just a customer, she was paid to be nice to him.

She brought his coffee and he let the idea drop, instantly distracted when he met her gaze. He had assumed her eyes were brown but when they caught the natural light streaming in through the window, he found they were a bright, lovely hazel. She was a creature that belonged outdoors, under sunbeams.

For an hour, Ben tried to write. All he could think about was that perfect balance of green and golden brown.

 

* * *

 

A week past. Another.

Then school let out and Ben found himself to have entirely too much time on his hands. With no more finals or papers to bleed dry, his weekends were empty. His sixteen-year-old students were surely elated but Ben had nothing but his moleskin and his own head--a dangerous place to be trapped in for any duration of time.

It was a Saturday and the girl wouldn’t be working, but he needed to get out of the house, if only for a few hours.

_Castle Cafe_ was busier than he was accustomed to but his table was still open so he went inside and settled in with his latte. He thankfully didn’t see any of his own students but there was a group of kids that attended the high school he taught at clustered obnoxiously around a too-small table, all giggling over blended iced coffees (glorified milkshakes, if you asked him).

He doodled on the corner of a blank page, unable to focus and sorely tempted to send them a threatening glare.

Ben was about to leave when she came in, backside squeezed into a tiny pair of jean shorts and a crop top exposing her midriff. She had a belly button piercing, he realized, then scowling at his idle pen. She must have been younger than he originally thought. Ben wasn’t thirty yet but she made him feel old in a way he didn’t appreciate.

At least she was unlikely to notice him. He clicked his pen a few times before deciding he should go, after all.

Then she sat across from him without warning, pink lips wrapped around a straw, a cup of iced tea glistening with condensation in her palm.

“Is this seat taken?” she asked with a coy tilt of her head, as if she hadn’t just _taken_ it.

Ben cleared his throat. “No, I was just leaving anyway.”

She pouted and he could feel warmth spreading over his cheeks. “That’s a shame. I was going to ask if you’d read me some of your poetry.”

_Oh._

That wasn’t a good idea. It was a very not-good idea.

All he’s written about in the past few weeks was _her._ Her smile and her round, glittering eyes.

He promptly stood, knees knocking against the table top, tipping over his empty cup. “Sorry, I--uh--don’t share my work.”

Could he do nothing without looking like a bumbling fool in front of her?

She sat up straight. “Really? I figured you were published and everything.”

Him? Published? It was laughable, almost. He shook his head, nervously tucking his book between his arm and side.

“No, I’m not a poet. Not really.”

She blinked at him, relentless. “You write an awful lot of poetry for someone who isn’t a poet.”

 

* * *

 

The girl wasn’t working on Monday like she usually did. It occurred to Ben belatedly that it was pathetic he knew her schedule but all he was was angry. She was avoiding him.

Out of misplaced spite, he ordered a cappuccino with a pump of toffee--he almost got hazelnut, but then he was reminded of her again--and Ben hated it. He hated that he couldn’t go out for coffee without thinking about a girl whose name he didn’t even know. His sugary cappuccino sloshed in his cup when he slammed it onto the tabletop, disgusted.

The front cover of his moleskin slapped open and after looking through the first few pages Ben was suddenly aware that even the poems that weren’t about her _were about her._ The morning blush was her’s. A gurgling creek was the sound of her laugh (or at least, how he imagined it to sound, bursting from her chest, full and loud).

He tore them out, one by one. This was stupid. She was just some barista. It didn’t matter.

Ben flipped to a new page.

_The Girl,_ he scribbled at the top.

_I don’t know your name._

_I don’t know your name but I wish I did_

_just so when you ask me to bare my soul_

_with a straight face like it’s nothing,_

_I can tell you to fuck off without feeling guilty._

_It’s not nothing. You might as well tell_

_me to stand naked for an audience and jump_

_so strangers can see the jiggles of insecurity_

_wrapped around me like loose flapping skin._

_I think about asking, just so I have syllables,_

_a stretch of meaningless sounds, to match your face._

_I don’t._

_I don’t ever and this sucks and I hate this--_

Ben growled, tearing that page out too, crumpling it and adding it to the stack.

_But I don’t hate you, and that sucks even more._

He sighed. He was just wasting paper, at this point. He ripped out the final page, resolving to find a new coffee shop with a new barista and get over it.

His cappuccino landed heavily in the garbage, followed quickly by the stack of papers he had tug free of the binding. They slid against each other, whispering _failure_ as they fell. He almost kicked the can before leaving, but then she was marching through the front door and Ben favored escape over misguided fury.

 

* * *

 

Ben didn’t go looking for a new coffee shop with a new barista, and he certainly didn’t get over it. Regardless, he was too stubborn to stop going to a place he’s been a regular at for years just because some girl made him feel like an idiot.

She was waiting for him, lip caught in her teeth. When he approached, she hesitated before reaching for something on the counter, retrieving a stack of papers, bound together by a paper clip. His eyes widened, then narrowed, as she delicately pushed them towards him.

The page on top had been crumpled and later flattened out with care. Ben didn’t dare look at the lines he had written, stark and angry on a coffee-spattered paper. She had read them.

The girl had dug into the trash and fucking read them. He clenched his teeth.

“I’m sorry if what I said bothered you so much but you shouldn’t just throw your work away,” she whispered.

“You had no right to read these,” Ben seethed, snatching them from the countertop and roughly stuffing them into his moleskin.

“No,” she agreed quietly, “I didn’t.”

Yet she didn’t look at all apologetic. In fact, for a moment, the girl looked perfectly pleased with herself that she _had_  read the poems--if they could really be called that.

“Why, Ben, do you think I was so interested in hearing your work? Do you think I pester _all_ the emo poets that come through here?”

He made an indignant squawk. “What?” Ben wasn’t sure what to address first. “I’m not _emo_. How do you know my name? Have you been stalking me?”

She snorted, glancing about the cafe to be certain he was the only customer before gripping him by the front of his shirt and tugging his upper-half over the counter to breathe against his lips, “You hand me the same credit card with your name on it almost every day. For someone who looks so smart, you’re pretty dumb.”

And then her mouth was mashed against his, slender fingers carding through his hair before forming a tight fist that threatened to tear strands out at the roots. He gasped and she was swift to take advantage of his parted lips, her silky, warm tongue darting over the roof of his mouth in a way that made him groan.

She was kissing him. Passionately. _Violently_. Ben didn’t even know her god damned name but he kissed her back, hand coming up to cup the edge of her jaw.

How could he ever properly describe the hot sweetness of her breath? The abrasive scrape of her little incisors? The whine that caught in the back of her throat when he tried to pull her closer, regardless of the counter between them? He could bury himself in the taste of her mouth for hours and still ache for _more_.

Ben should have felt exceptionally stupid for how oblivious he had been. Instead, he was content with allowing his persistent thoughts to fade into the background and simply feel. He was used to wanting someone; what Ben had difficulty accepting was the thought that someone could want him back.

The girl smiled against him as if everything had gone according to some grand scheme. She _liked_ him. Unexpected giddiness burst in his chest, his anger long forgotten.

“Ask me what my name is,” she mumbled, slowly nipping at his lower lip.

Ben huffed. “What’s your name?”

She pulled away, a shy grin spreading her swollen lips. “It’s Rey.”

Somehow, Ben felt that he should have known.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! :)


End file.
